" I only have limited expertise and limited time. What I can do is mark those messages that seem to have received reasonable replies as "assumed answered". ...I hope that marking old threads which seem to have been answered with "assumed answered" is a good compromise. If not, please let me know and I will stop doing this."

So I found everything I'd answered changed from not- to assumed answered; but not only mine: in the 112 questions in 'on the seashore' not one was unanswered -barely credible- including this http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/thread/2777 about starfish in XclareX's tank & her question "..we still have no clue... wanted to know what they are or who may know" what answer did Florin assume here?

As this example might be a slipup I turned to Identification, starting at end page 52 & found plenty of questions with no answers, & all now "assumed answered" I gave up at P.32 having found 38 in 21 pages, & went back to P. 52 to check I'd not missed any unanswered questions & find the 1st unanswered. That was

The consequence of this 'promotion' (or dumping) is that all former "unanswered" questions are now indistinguishable from answered questions, so even if someone finds one there & answers it,promoting it to top of the list, no-one will look at it thinking it already answered, eg the broad-bodied chaser F that I ID'd at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/message/25733 ,which Mike Hardman recently agreed with

Though some of these zero-answer questions are 'self-answering' eg "is it x y?", most that I looked at weren't, & some intriguing eg 3416 fossil sharks fin, 3991 colorful 'beetle larva', 4723 looks between a mole & a cricket.

So for some conclusion it's obviously preposterous that every question more than a month or so old is either answered or can be assumed answered; obviously there's a fair quota of fuzzy photos & lots of unresolvable cases. So 'Assumed Answered' at present just means it's more than a month or so old. If members were to post questions of the kind "who agrees with me that this thread has been answered" ( or better "25733=Libellula depressa?" ) with a link to that thread,I believe the agreements/disagreemts & reputns thereof would be a quicker way to find those questions really answered.

The starfish thread http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/thread/2777 has been marked as "assumed answered" because it's an old one that will probably be never answered. The same applies to the Cape Town spider http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/thread/9830. Many things cannot be ID'd from photos alone, or we may not have experts in some groups, especially exotic organisms. These threads should be marked as "Hopeless from the point of view of an ID - nobody will ever answer it". Unfortunately, there is no such option. We only have two options: 1 - leave these as they are ('unsanswered'), and 2 - mark them as 'assumed answered'. Option 1 means all these hopeless threads will send us an email every 120 hours untill the end of time, which is not practical. Do you prefer this option? Why? The thing is, all these threads can still be answered after having been marked as 'assumed answered'. I did explain earlier that these threads are not closed. You can add comments, IDs, their owners can mark these as 'helpful' or even 'correct', which means the thread will become 'answered'.

The 'assumed answered' stamp shouldn't be taken literally. It is just a way of marking these threads as not for immediate attention. Leaving them 'unanswered' would make the forum unmanageable.

The carder bee thread http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/thread/10003 has been left 'unanswered'. Does this make you feel better? I think the bee is not a Bombus, but more likely Anthophora. However, as the photos are not clear enough, I will never know. Can you solve this mystery? Do you prefer leaving this thread 'unanswered' forever? How would this help?

The dragonfly thread http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/message/25733 has been marked as 'assumed answered', and as far as I can see it has been answered indeed. What is the problem here? The owner (Gillie) could have marked it as 'answered' by marking your reply (or Hannah's) as 'correct'. She didn't, perhaps because she couldn't check - that's why she asked the question in the first place. Would you prefer it 'unanswered' until Gillie marks one of the replies as 'correct'? Why? Would you prefer me to mark one of the replies as 'correct'? Or would you prefer that I and others mark replies as 'correct' even if we don't know if this is true? If I or other Museum staff would start to check every thread for the accuracy of every reply, it would defeat the purpose of the forum. It was meant as a place where members are the experts, and they are the ones who deliver IDs. If we ID every thing that has already been identified by others, wouldn't this be duplication of effort? Who would benefit from that? Besides, what we can do about those threads where we really don't know what has been posted? How should we mark those threads?

Any suggestions for making this forum a better place for you are appreciated. I will send them to the administrator.

I find your justifications breathtaking, Florin. If the Cape spider is same as starfish thread ,ie too old, even though it was only posted on 5May 2013, then indeed all older postings would also be "assumed answered" ,but then that'd go flat against your claim that you "mark those that have reasonable replies" which is "all you can do" & the business about "marking old threads which seem to have been answered". If however the spider isnt the same (NB it's pretty large & colourful & very clear) Who are you to decide what members can & can't ID, even if NHM hasn't got experts in some fields. By mrkg as assumed answered (& so making it indistinguishable from answered You've deprived members of having a go & the creator of the chance of getting an answer. I thought 1 of the great things about this site was it's ability to ID exotic things. To say of exotic threads, as you seem to,[should be marked as "Hopeless from the point of view of an ID - nobody will ever answer it".] is unbelievable.

Thanks for all your effort in getting things right here, and sorry for upsetting you. I just try to keep some order, so I appreciate any help. As I said before, please let me know how would you like us to do things and I will email your suggestions to our administrator.

Now about your questions. Cape spider and Starfish are the same to me - they are very unlikely to be ever ID'd. But I may be wrong. Someone will look at those photos and reply with a name. What is the problem here? I don't see your point. If you know what the spider is, please reply to that thread. The owner will mark your reply as 'correct' and the thread will become 'answered'.

You say that the 'assumed answered' and 'answered' threads are indistinguishable. I'm sorry, but what do you mean by indistinguishable? Can't you read the subtitles on top of the threads? They appear pretty different on my screen:

This question is Assumed Answered.

This question has been Answered.

Please help me understand where is the problem here.

I have explained that the threads that are 'assumed answered' are still open. Members can reply, comment, add photos, etc. Just try to reply to one of them, see if it works. Then how am I depriving the members from having a go at them and the owner from getting an answer?

I did not say that exotic enquiries should be marked as "Hopeless etc." You are quoting me out of context. What I said was that some threads should be marked as "Hopeless...", and one of the reasons is that exotic animals are less likely to get an ID here. I do identify exotic animals, so I make such decisions based on individual situations.

How old is too old? I would say two months of a thread remaining unanswered is long enough. But age is not the only criterion when making a decision. I did not mark the Cape spider thread because it was old, but because I think it can be safely assumed that nobody will reply to that. However, it is still open, and you or any other members can post a reply.

Please show me a thread that you would like to contribute to but you can't because it was marked as 'assumed answered'.

Please let me know which threads you would like to see marked as 'unanswered' and why.

Please give me a list of threads with species that have been identified correctly, and I will mark them as such, as per your advice.

Looking forward for your opinion on what to do to solve these problems,

When I said that 'assumed answered' & 'answered' look the same I meant to say in the lists (eg on the seashore or identity) as they've both been given the same logo, so you can't tell which they are until you open them; & then if you do provide an ID or agree with one, as Mike Hardman did in my case, It'll look like an already answered question & no-one will look at it. As there's 4 different kinds of thread (Including discussions) so there should be 4 different kinds of logo.(maybe A? instead of tick?).

I have checked those links. Please reply to those you have an answer for, then I will mark those as correct answers. Opening new threads as a reply to old posts doesn't help. Just reply to the original thread and I will close it. You did this for the South African spider - thank you! Keep doing this, as I did to someothers. Sadly, many of those posts with exotic species will remain unanswered. One of those posts is not a question. What's your question about this one? I hope this answers to some of your questions. If not, please state them clearly again, for this has gone on for a long time and honestly I don't know what you are really asking.

There's still more about how questions get answered that wasn't clear in your answer at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/message/29602 , eg that museum ID team can only mk a question as answered "when the creator hasn't" (to paraphrase). It'd be helpful to know how long that is, as then 1ce a suitable answer's given one would wait that time + a bit extra to see if staff mark it, before butting in with support or extra info. 2ndly ,having then added info, hopefully that wouldn't involve another equal wait. Judging by the speed with which the 'starfish confusion' was marked as answered (& I'm assuming here XclareX didn't mark it as answered) the 2nd time is no time at all.

(& lastly I notice at the top of this question "mark as assumed answered" which I don't remember from my previous question, & I wondered what that was for)

I had better jump in here with an explanation. The Museum ID team is not large and their work is not limited to monitoring these forums, so to help them manage the questions they receive here they automatically receive email alerts for any posts marked as questions that have not been 'Answered' or 'Assumed answered' within 120 hours. Unfortunately, this also includes any posts that have remained unanswered since the forum launched in 2009 so they receive tens to hundreds of alerts a day, depending on the number of new posts in addition to the older ones.

What Florin is trying to say is that - to reduce the number of alerts - any posts that haven't been answered within 120 hours and look as though they will never be answered by a Museum ID team member (either because there isn't the expertise/the photos arent clear/the description doesn't help/ etc.) will have their status changed to 'Assumed Answered'. This is so that they aren't swamped with alerts for threads that can't be responded to by the ID team.

Unfortunately this is a limitation of the software running the forums as it only offers three statuses for threads, 'Not Answered' (which triggers the email alerts), 'Answered' and 'Assumed answered' (which don't). In the situations you've highlighted here, the latter in particular is a misnomer and ideally what we would have is an option to mark threads as 'Can't be answered by the Museum ID team', but that facility isn't - and won't be - available in the software. Therefore we have to make do with 'Assumed answered' for these older threads.

However, none of these status flags close the threads to further responses, so we have to rely on people being intelligent enough to recognise that 'assumed answered' when there is no reply does not mean that a correct answer has been provided.

I hope that is clear? If not please let me know what you would like explained further.

P.S. while the ID team will certainly try their best to make an identification of non-UK based finds, it does state on the Foreign Finds page:

Our Museum experts may be able to help you identify your find. They specialise in identifying UK species but will also have a go at identifying foreign finds. There are also many naturalists outside the Museum who follow these forums and may be able to help too.

And on the identification home page:

Welcome to the Museum's identification forum where amateur naturalists and experts can ask questions about all aspects of UK biodiversity. You can share identification tips on UK plants, animals, rocks and minerals, and experts from the Museum and the NaturePlus community will help to answer your queries and identify your specimens.

In other words, no promises are made with respect to identifications outside their area of expertise.